WFMW: making laundry less of a chore

With five people in our family, it seems like laundry is pretty much the story of my life.

We have been using this system at our house the past few years so everyone can help make the process easier.

1. We have six BROWN laundry baskets, one for each person in the family and one for towels. Everyone in the family puts his or her laundry in his or her brown basket each day.

2. When a basket is full, I throw it in the washing machine. Shhhh…. Sometimes I don’t even sort out the whites. Or, if I do sort, I wash that person’s colors, then the whites in a row.

3. That way, all of that person’s clean clothes can go together in his or her WHITE laundry basket. This way, I don’t have to sort laundry on either end.

4. I try to wash, dry, fold and put away one basket of laundry each day. But, let’s face it. It usually doesn’t happen that way. At least each person in the family can find clean clothes — in his or her WHITE basket!

5. This system also makes it easier for the kids to help put away the laundry. They can take their baskets and sort the underwear, socks, shorts, t-shirts and PJs. Even really young children can make a pile of underwear and at least put those away.

6. If all of my white baskets are all full of clean clothes, it forces me to catch up on folding the laundry. Otherwise, I won’t have anywhere to put the next batch of clean clothes!

Jane Anne… we don't have a large ANY room in our home! Still trying to figure out where we will squeeze a sixth person into our three-bedroom home! Anyone have an extra bedroom they could loan us??The brown baskets go in closets and bedrooms wherever you might normally put a hamper or whatever you use to store dirty clothes.The white baskets are all the same size so they stack right in front of the dryer. If I'm on top of things (which I'm usually not) only one white basket is full of clean clothes at a time. Otherwise, we have a few days to trip over baskets of clean clothes… which is motivation to put them away!!I would love to hear how other people do their laundry. Seriousy! This topic is so interesting to me!

I have a family of seven and think this is a great idea! I just might have to steal it. Do you put the names of each person on the laundry baskets that belong to them? BTW congrats on your pregnancy! I found you through Jenny Jenny and am going to click that little follow button to glean more advice from a fellow M.O.M. Oh, and would you care if I posed the "How do YOU do YOUR laundry?" question on my blog with a link back to yours? Thanks